Katoucha Niane

Katoucha Niane (born December 30, 1960 in Conakry , Guinea , † probably on February 2, 2008 in Paris ) was a French model .

Life

Katoucha Niane, daughter of the playwright and historian Prof. Djibril Tamsir Niane , had to leave Guinea with her family after her father fell out of favor with President Ahmed Sékou Touré . She first lived in Mali , then in Dakar , Senegal . At the age of seventeen she married and came to Europe with her husband. There she was discovered by Jules-Francois Crahay von Lanvin and started her modeling career. At the end of the 1980s she was on the catwalk for Thierry Mugler for the first time , and later for Christian Lacroix and Paco Rabanne . She was one of the first dark-skinned African top models and known internationally as Katoucha and, among other things, the muse of the French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent . In 1994 she ended her modeling career.

The mother of three children who live in Senegal campaigned against the widespread female circumcision in African countries. She documented her experiences with the circumcision of female genitals at the age of nine in 2007 in her French-language autobiography Dans ma chair (literally: "In my flesh").

Niane disappeared on February 1, 2008 on the way to her houseboat on the banks of the Seine in Paris near the Pont Alexandre III bridge and is believed to have drowned in the Seine. On February 28, 2008, she was found dead on the Pont du Garigliano bridge . She died at the age of 47.

Fonts

• Katoucha: Dans ma chair . Michel Lafon: Neuilly-sur-Seine Cedex 2007. ISBN 978-2-7499-0666-9

Web links

• Website of Katoucha Niane ( Memento of October 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (French)
• Katoucha in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Obituary Katoucha Niane (French)
• "Senegal - Model Disappearance" , African Press Agency, February 13, 2008
• “The sad end of the black princess” , Spiegel Online , March 1, 2008

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Henning Lohse: Death in the Seine: The sad end of the black princess. In: Spiegel Online . March 1, 2008, accessed February 7, 2017 . 
2. ↑ "Katoucha Niane" , Herald Tribune: National Headlines from AP 29 February, 2008.
3. ↑ Lio: Ex-top model missing in Paris. In: stern.de . February 7, 2008, accessed February 7, 2017 . 
4. ↑ "Ex-top model Katoucha Niane found dead in the Seine"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , AP, February 29, 2008.  
5. ↑ Michel LAFON - Dans ma chair (Katoucha) ( Memento of the original from June 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.